{This is Miatta from Liberia. I was one of many people who loaned her the money she needed to buy inventory for her restaurant.}

Today I wanted to share my favourite charity with you – Kiva. I’m guessing most of you have already heard about Kiva, but for those of you who haven’t, I’m really excited to introduce you to such an awesome organisation.

So what is Kiva?

Kiva works with microfinance institutions on five continents to provide loans to people without access to traditional banking systems. One hundred percent of your loan is sent to these microfinance institutions, which we call Field Partners, who administer the loans in the field. {Kiva.org}

In short – Kiva allows regular people like you and me to share our wealth with entrepreneurs (mostly in developing countries) who would otherwise not have an opportunity to borrow money for their businesses.

{This is the Cielo Azul Group – one of the members, Dora María, has a craft store in Mexico. This loan helps her to buy merchandise for her craft store}

Instead of just throwing money at the symptoms of poverty,  Kiva allows us to put money into these communities at a more fundamental point – to help people help themselves and their communties via commerce. This happens in the form of a $25 loan from you to them. Each micro-biz owner has a defined loan amount that they need to improve one aspect of their business, and your $25 helps towards filling the quota for that loan. 

It’s my belief that it’s more powerful to empower people build their own small businesses – and therefore break the poverty cycle – than it is to provide money to fix the symptoms of poverty. The whole ‘teach a man to fish’ parable comes to mind.

Of course, being a micro-business owner myself, I also love the chance to help others fulfil their own business dreams and goals!

This is why I love Kiva.

Of course, due to the businesses model – you are giving a loan rather than a donation – chances are good that after 12 months or so, you’ll get your $25 back again. However, if you’re like me, I’ll bet that you’ll just keep re-investing that money over and over again, helping more and more people grow their businesses. It’s an empowering feeling.

While I was poking around the Kiva website looking up the info for this post, I discovered that they’re currently offering free trials to new members – that is, if you sign up for the first time right now, they’ll give you $25 with which to make your very first loan. So it will cost you nada, zip, zero to change someone’s life. Hop to it, people, I promise you won’t regret it!

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